Page - 361 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me 361 ino di San Giuliano rejected the proposal to add Nice, Corsica, Tunisia and Albania to the Apennine state. With the exception of Albania, these were, evidently, French possessions, which would have been available only after the complete defeat of France. However, the French territories were precisely what Italy expected for its participation in the war at Germany’s side. The Italian-German relationship was one thing ; the Ital- ian-Austrian another. And Rome had changed its mind and demanded compensation only from Austria-Hungary. Yet the hoped-for offer from Austria, namely the cession of Austrian Trentino, did not come. On 8 August, the Joint Council of Ministers in Vienna dealt once more with Italy’s demands for compensation. It was noticeable here that the attitude of the two halves of the Empire, to the extent that this attitude was mentioned in the contributions of the two prime ministers, was completely identical in the question of ceding Trentino and that the Hungarian Prime Minister opposed the Italian wishes at least as vehemently as Count Stürgkh. Conrad von Hötzendorf, however, had noted unmistakeably during this session of the Joint Council of Ministers and before he left for the field that Austria-Hungary had nothing to mobilise in order to face Italy in the event of an Italian attack. He was even clearer when he said : ‘From a military point of view’, it was so imperative to keep Italy neutral ‘that he would say, as a soldier, that no price was too high’.840 Then Count Stürgkh said that in the event that the Italians were really serious and threatened with the choice of territorial cessions or war, he would have no moral scru- ples whatsoever in betraying the Italians. The following scene could be set : the German Empire should go and, purportedly behind Austria’s back, make the desired territorial assurances to Italy. By means of a second contract between Austria-Hungary and Ger- many, however, the first would become obsolete. Tisza and the Hungarian ‘Minister at the Royal Court’ in Vienna, Count Stephan Burián, came out in opposition to this. Italy, they said, would not allow itself to be so easily betrayed. Consequently, fears of an Italian attack not only became so strong that the forti- fication of Vienna, Budapest and the Danube crossings was undertaken as a result. Furthermore, border observations and safeguarding measures were taken in the most unobtrusive way possible. The language used towards Italy remained engaging, however. The newspapers were also obliged to adhere to this and were not allowed to pull out all the stops. ‘Now the order has been issued that our newspapers are not allowed to insult Italy, but are permitted to adopt the insults of the German newspapers’, noted the Chief of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Civil Administration, Ludwig Thálloczy, on 5 August 1914 in his diary.841 On the Austrian side, it was pointed out that the Dual Monarchy did not strive for any territorial changes in the Balkans, i.e. did not want to reduce the size of Ser- bia ; therefore, there did not have to be any corresponding compensation agreements. Should there, for not yet foreseeable reasons, be changes in the Balkans, however, the